Ally Pally open day and new board city 29th December 2008
Following a very pleasant Christmas during which I received not one but two Le Creuset casserole pots (thanks again Mum & Dad!) we've had a few lazy days about the house. Alexandra Palace is perhaps my favorite London landmark, and one of the reasons Muswell Hill never fails to delight on a daily basis. I've been looking forward to the open day for a while, but the Victorian Theatre in particular was amazing- in a state of dereliction and formerly used as a prop store by the BBC. To see it was to begin to hatch a plan to use it as a live video location for [band]. Stacey blogs in better detail here.Last couple of days I've also managed to populate a few more boards for Fredric Effects: some Green Big Muffs, a whole lotta Harmonic Percolators, and lastly I'm testing out a tremolo effect, which could be good.
Grumbly Wolf on ebay here
Comments
The restaurants in the town are almost exclusively cliche, middle class chains – A Giraffe here, a Pizza Express. Yawn. The shops themselves are nearly non existent. You’d never travel to Muswell Hill to shop. Not that an area should ever be defined by consumers, but some convenience would be nice. This in turn leads to my bafflement over the outrageous house prices. With a lack of shops, transport links and credible nightlife it makes little sense. Surely the fact it’s quite pretty can’t be reason enough? Don’t get me wrong, I like the town. It’s better than Harlsden for example, but much like Muhammad Ali, it's vastly overrated - especially as every single resident waxes lyrical about it's fantastic merits, of which I see very few.
Turning to Ally Pally, this is also nothing special. It’s nice to have on the outskirts of town I suppose but there outstanding about this landmark. The bar there is awful beyond belief. The venue, for bands, is terrible. The sound is drenched in echo and just unacceptable, it's too big for any kind of atmosphere and because of this it’s also too cold. The grass verges at the bottom of the slop are the only ones worth sitting on, which the climb to the higher ground is hardly worth it. It also holds a dubious Bonfire Night, with no bonfire - ignoring what the celebration is essentially about. Burning a Guy. In short, it's average to say the least. A nice listed building on a glorified common. I could name 400 better green spaces in North London but there you go.
Of course, this doesn't mean that I believe other parts of North London to be amazing. Quite the opposite. It just seems that Muswell Hill (and Crouch End) are considered to be the apex of property aspiration when it ticks almost zero boxes.